Saturday, February 27. 2010
At American Thinker, a brief word on the topic.
America don't need no steenkin' noblesse. But, re the elites, Liberals are smarter. I knew that! They are smart and I am dumb. But not too dumb to be able to support my family and my wife's dumb animals in some degree of comfort and pleasure.
Thank goodness for the equality of one dummie, one vote. I have two Ivy degrees but always doubted my brains. Guess I was right about something.
A reader sent in this photo of Phragmites australis, aka Phragmites, aka Common Reed, from a southern New England marsh yesterday. This presumably non-native, invasive reed has spread like a cancer in marshes across the US, crowding out native marsh species and, in many areas, creating hundreds or thousands of acres of sterile "monoculture" marshland (eg the vast and once-biologically-bountiful New Jersey marshlands).
(There is a native species of Phragmites, shorter, far less aggressive, and pickier of habitat. I took a photo of a stand of it in Canada, but can't find my photo. Here's a genetic study of Phragmites species in North America.)
Ducks Unlimited has many programs, such as this one, to try to control these weed reeds. Nonetheless, they are here to stay. Illegal immigration or globalization?
Friday, February 26. 2010
This fascinating "virtual back lot" video saddened our friend The Anchoress.
It didn't sadden me, but rather impressed me with the use of graphics software. How do they perform this theatrical magic?
When I consider it, our lives are packed with incoming lies and virtual realities: the news, stories and fiction writing, advertising, photoshopped photos, politicians' statements, theater, legal "theories," activist's anecdotes, fantasies and imagination, memories, dreams (and the tales our patients tell us about their lives).
Mr. Plato had plenty of thoughts on the subject of human perception of reality, and he was darn well aware of the human distorting component too.
Some good blogger (I forget who) recently commented that she (I think a she) was sick of the term "narrative." I sympathise, but I am not sick of it yet. I find it useful. The overused term "authentic" is the one I am sick of.
I have not yet entered a pomo solipsistic world in which reality is a pure mental construction or, worse yet, a pure social construction (see the wonderful Berger and Luckmann). Reality does exist: Just hit your thumb with a hammer or stub your toe on something in the dark to be reminded of that. Many of us, fortunately, do not distort things very much to ourselves, or to others.
However, I do live in a world in which meaning is indeed a human construction, both personally and socially.
A "narrative" is an effort, conscious or unconscious, to ascribe meaning: designed to deceive, to manipulate, to entertain, to seduce, to support one's wishes or self respect, to indulge, to self-justify or to rationalize or serve some other defensive purpose, etc. - or just to try to make sense out of the stuff that seems to happen - more or less regardless of its objective validity. Every song, picture, poem, film, and book is a "narrative" too. Like any blog post. "I" am a narrative, I guess, and right now, presenting a narrative about narratives.
One of the many interesting things about being a shrink is to contemplate a person's "narrative," whether it is just a report of something that happened, or a life story. When somebody is engaged in an exploratory, depth treatment, these narratives change over time - which is why we never take them at face value. We assume a narrative meets some present want, or need, or fantasy. Our always-challenging and endlessly-interesting job is to probe the meaning of the narratives we see or hear in the work of untangling what ails a person's heart and soul.
One of our luxuries as people in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy field is the reliable consistency of the human personality "structure" (another term I hate - shrinks often use fancy latinate terms and complex conceptualizations for ordinary things): like a jigsaw puzzle, there is always a picture of something in there somewhere. Another is the luxury of not worrying too much about the literal truthfulness of things (unless dealing with undiagnosed sociopaths).
I could go on and on about this, but that's enough for now.
Thursday, February 25. 2010
California Republicans are a minority. Start with that reality. Then see what allows a Republican challenger to a Democrat US Senate incumbent to win.
1. A disliked or tepid campaigner Democrat incumbent.
2. A liked or respected star-quality Republican challenger.
3. Dire economics impelling desire for change.
4. Deemed political chicanery by the incumbent.
5. Enough money to campaign in a big population and area state.
The shape of the Republican primary campaign, thus far, is lacking in taking advantage of favorable factors and is even frittering them away.
Continue reading "California Republican Senate Primary Playing Into Democrat Hands"
Few of our readers recall tunneling to the barn during the big New England nor'easter blizzard of March 11, 1888.
Here's the weather story of that snowstorm (which tragically omits the role of AGW - we should never let an ancient weather crisis go to waste).
Some photos:
Longacre Square, NYC (Now Times Square):
Somewhere in Manhattan:
Somewhere in Brooklyn:
Main St., Stamford, CT, from this Stamford history site with more photos:
Train tracks in Norwalk, CT:
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
Vicenza is an uncrowded, almost unvisited UNESCO World Heritage site with a great number of Palladian buildings. The nearby La Rotonda was shown here recently, but usually Americans visit it as a side trip from over-crowded Venice. A great pity. Our suggestion is to stay in Vicenza or Verona, and if absolutely necessary, take a day-trip to Venice!
Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza. The two columns were built at different times. The lion represents the Venetian republic and was once the only column in the square. It wasn't until over a century later that the second column was built in honor of Vicenza and its citizens.
Street Scene, Vicenza
Below is Villa Valmarana, between La Rotonda and Vincenza. In 1757, Tiepolo and his son Giandomenico were invited to Vicenza to fresco rooms in the Villa Valmarana and in the adjoining guest quarters, the so-called 'foresteria'. Their patron was Count Giustino Valmarana, a scholar and theater enthusiast. Tiepolo frescoed the walls and ceilings of the vestibule and four ground-floor rooms, while his son executed the decoration in the adjacent guest house.
 I do not know the history of how government unions came to be, but I deplore them. Who are they defending those employees from? Their evil neighbors who pay their salaries and their benefits?
The days of fat-cat evil Capitalists oppressing workers are long gone. Private sector unionization is in the dusk of its history, but government unionization is growing by leaps and bounds. Can anyone imagine a unionized military?
In my view, public employee unionization should be illegal because their opponent, in effect, is the public. But there is the basic right to free assembly. At the very least, public employee unions should be prohibited from politics and political contributions: that seems corrupt by definition but, again, there are logical consistency and freedom issues here.
People have been thinking about the topic lately:
From Declining unions, increasing stranglehold:
As the latest BLS statistics reveal, more union members – 7.9 million – now work for the government than the 7.4 million union members working for companies in the private economy, which has five times more workers. This imbalance has profound consequences for all workers, and for democracy itself.
From Rick Moran's WHAT DO WE OWE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES?
We have allowed public employees to ascend to a privileged place - a pedestal that they were never intended to occupy by the Founders - to the point where their influence over politicians, especially at the state and local level, have made them a force unto themselves in growing the size of government. More public employees means more union members, which means more dues money, which translates into more political contributions to friendly politicians who will gladly repeat the cycle.
This vicious circle must be ended. The biggest reason is that it is bankrupting us.
At Reason, Class War: How public servants became our masters:
People who are supposed to serve the public have become a privileged elite that exploits political power for financial gain and special perks. Because of its political power, this interest group has rigged the game so there are few meaningful checks on its demands. Government employees now receive far higher pay, benefits, and pensions than the vast majority of Americans working in the private sector. Even when they are incompetent or abusive, they can be fired only after a long process and only for the most grievous offenses.
It’s a two-tier system in which the rulers are making steady gains at the expense of the ruled. The predictable results: Higher taxes, eroded public services, unsustainable levels of debt, and massive roadblocks to reforming even the poorest performing agencies and school systems. If this system is left to grow unchecked, we will end up with a pale imitation of the free society envisioned by the Founders.
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
 WSJ: The proposed new edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders could place large swaths of the population under the umbrella of pathology. One quote:
...good psychiatrists do not rely too heavily on the DSM when they care for patients. There is simply no substitute for observing the patient, listening to his story, and fine-tuning his treatments—psychological and pharmacological—as needed.
The framers of the DSM III knew this well. They cautioned against manual users taking too literally the sharp boundaries drawn between disorders and between disorder and mental health. "This version," they wrote in the preface, "is only one still frame in the ongoing process of attempting to better understand mental disorders." Thirty years later, despite undeniable progress in brain science, we are saying much the same thing.
Well said, Dr. Satel.
Ed. Addendum: Louis Menand, with wonderful clarity, looks at the tendency to pathologize everything into a "disorder" in The New Yorker. Every human has his own difficulties, weaknesses, pains, sorrows, limitations, fears, heartaches, struggles. No one can catalogue and categorize them all. Simply trying to understand one person is a heck of a challenge.
 This makes the best cornbread I've ever had - and I have had plenty of cornbread. I'll never bother with another brand. What makes it special is the sort of corn meal they use: coarse-ground with corn hunks so it comes out chewy but with a crunchy crust.
They sell it at Costco. Also, I was surprised to see, at Amazon. Try it.
Monday, February 22. 2010
President Obama’s proposals for health care legislation fiddles and fizzles, hardens disputes with opponents, excludes bridges to agreements, and ignores the root cause of overwhelming public unease. Rather than “change” he continues and exacerbates failure.
Summaries, inadequate, are available from the New York Times and Washington Post. The Washington Post, also, offers – more usefully -- the White House provided sketch of details. All leave out in-depth analysis.
Essentially, Obama’s proposals are compromises between the entirely Democrat House and Senate legislation. It actually increases some taxpayer and industry garnishments to pay for enlarged entitlements, adjusting or delaying some. Similarly, the imposed mandate on the states to fund enlarged Medicaid eligibility is delayed a few years but remains a fiscal time-bomb impacting all other state services and driving tax increases. The penalty on large employers who do not provide medical insurance is slightly eased, for the first 30 employees, but the penalty increased, and it is still a sub rosa “mandate” and economic and competitive burden. Some additional database measures are added to perhaps and marginally combat Medicare fraud.
In essence, the Obama proposals continue on the path of grossly enlarged federal government intrusion into and control of individual choices and states’ variations that fit their circumstances and resources.
Indeed, it goes further than before in adding wholesale federal control over insurance premiums, imposing rates, exploiting ignorant furor at large increases in individual coverage premiums by Wellpoint (Blue Cross) in California. The Associated Press provides, however, some of the facts: the individuals segment is deep in the red; it is unfair for the employer segment or other states’ insured to subsidize it; overall profits are 35th out of 53 industries in the Fortune 500 list. Obama’s proposal only deepens the cost pit for 90+% of insured, while driving private insurers out of business which impels a default to more government-provided and dictated, taxpayer-paid medical plans.
The Obama proposals are meant to bridge differences among Democrats in control of the House and Senate, so they can turn the small procedural loophole of “reconciliation” into an override of all other procedures and precedents, not to mention public opposition. Further, Obama does not mention elements of the House and Senate legislation like wholesale cuts to Medicare spending (primarily of provider reimbursements, already low, which would drive more to not take Medicare patients) thus leaving the cuts included as a false way to mask the enormous budgetary costs because such drastic cuts are politically unlikely to actually occur. Meanwhile, taxes on high earners are increased even further than in the House and Senate bills.
“Reconciliation”, purportedly, allows the House to accept the Senate’s bill. There’s reasonable vote-count doubt about that, as well as legal challenges. President Obama’s proposals are, in effect, a new bill to be agreed by the House and Senate that fiddles with a “reconciliation” ram-through. If the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides an estimate of the Obama adjustment proposals together with the remainders of the House and Senate bills, it should be evident that the costs will be much larger, especially if unrealistic ploys are identified and full implementation time periods are included. (See footnote, added)
Obama fails to address the fundamental opposition to vastly increased federal control over 1/6th of the US economy and the lives of 100% of Americans, while deepening the race to national bankruptcy.
Obama fails to address the cost-driver of excess defensive-medicine, by various measures 10-30% of medical spending, that providers use to avoid excessive tort liability. Democrats’ largest contributors and supporters, tort attorneys, are left immunized from impact. Similarly, the impact on rich union benefits – unions being the other largest Democrat contributor base -- is delayed and reduced.
Reductions in the ability to save pretax dollars for health care remain, via health savings accounts and cafeteria plans, reducing individual choice, rather than maintaining or spreading them to more. Taxpayers or insureds who don’t use or support it are still likely to fund abortions. Sponsors of legal immigrants are still able to avoid their promised financial responsibility for legal immigrants’ medical care. Insureds are still unable to choose benefit plans allowed by other states that better fit their needs and budgets.
Obama’s proposals are nothing more than a campaign ploy to appear reasonable but they actually emphasize and enlarge the distance between Democrats’ floundering take-overs and the alternatives or discreet incremental measures that are widely supported.
Obama’s proposals are a transparent and hole-filled veil over what most already recognize as ugly and unacceptable. And, it isn’t closing time, when vision is blurred or judgment desperate. The public isn’t befuddled, and imperiled Congressional Democrats recognize that.
Rather than score, Obama again demonstrates himself as a crassly partisan loser, “arrogant” in the words of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, when it comes to accomplishing anything beyond words, his words no longer masking his ideologic inability to be practical.
House Republican Leader John Boehner sums Obama’s proposals as an “infomercial,” to be tuned out:
The President has crippled the credibility of this week's summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected. This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits.
* The CBO just wrote that President Obama's proposals lack sufficient details to "score" (i.e., cost) it, and even if it did that scoring would take longer than this week, past the so-called TV infomercial "summit." How convenient for hollow proposals to have no relaible numbers. More "ramming" with hidden horns.
Sunday, February 21. 2010
 William Tyndale was the Oxford-educated polyglot theologian and reformer who produced the first printed Bible in English.
His translation was from Erasmus' Greek-Latin Bible, the same one which Luther used to translate his German Bible. Tyndale's Bible was banned in Britain: you can't trust the rabble to read it themselves. He famously said that he wanted a Bible that "every plowman" could read the Scripture for himself.
Tyndale was executed by Henry Vlll for his efforts. It is believed that Thomas More was pushing for the execution.
It is thought that up to 80% of the King James Bible - the most printed book in the world - is Tyndale's product. For hundreds of years after the first printings, Protestants avoided the Anglican King James Bible, preferring the Geneva Bible (which is very similar). The Pilgrims used the Geneva Bible and, no, Anglicans are not historically Protestants and neither are their American Episcopalian brethren.
Excellent summary of the history of the Bible in English here.
Saturday, February 20. 2010
Counterfeit Cubans, from JR. Nicaraguan. Mine just arrived today, and I just smoked one. Cheap, legal in the US, and plenty tasty as a medium-strength everyday smoke with a hearty earthy tanginess. I am told that those Sumatran wrappers were grown from Connecticut seed. I can't say they are as good as a good Habanos, but quite enjoyable for the price. Perfect for this Obama economy.
Why does the O smoke cigarettes instead of cigars, anyway? Who does he think he is? FDR?
Friday, February 19. 2010
Now Mrs. BD is considering mountainous Corsica for a summer trip. The lad has been there, and recommends it. Popular with Brits, I am told. They speak French and Corsican there. My Corsican is a tad rusty but my French is OK. She found this little villa in Monticello, and says it would hold the whole family:
 
Thursday, February 18. 2010
Sea levels have been slowly rising since the end of the Little Ice Age. Some people seem to imagine that the world never changes, and never should change. Yet it always has changed.
From The Madness of Prince Charles, this basic inter-glacial temperature graph is always worth bearing in mind:
We tend to feel, here on the Farm, that AGW is a hyped-up, trumped-up carnival designed by people with their own economic, political, pagan-religious, or etc. agendas. Real science-minded people are always skeptics about the science du jour, and know full well that all speculative theories fail in time. The tell, with the Warmists, is how ardently they desire to believe in the projective computer models, regardless of the facts.
We believe that good stewardship of the earth means humbly respecting nature and its power, and preserving natural land as best we can during our brief time here.
Here's what we think, specifically:
1. Warming would be net a good thing for humanity. It always has been, in the past.
2. It's certainly not happening in any catastrophic way - if it is in any way that makes much difference. Climates always change, and the one thing we know for certain is that another Ice Age is coming down the pike eventually. Now that will be a real challenge to humanity. We are due another, and the last Ice Age did no favors for the human species.
3. Even if warming were, somehow, a bad thing (I would need a lot of convincing), nothing meaningful can or will be done about it.
4. Any futile or symbolic effort to do "something" about it will only enrich certain scam-artists, rent-seekers, and grant-seekers, and be exploited by governments to increase their domination of regular people and their tax receipts. Even the big oil companies are hedged and poised to make huge bucks on government legislation internationally in case it ever happens - which I doubt.
Addenda:
- I doubt that the frequently-misguided Tom Friedman has seen the above chart. For stunning Friedman hypocrisy, see here. He won't change his life, but he wants all you little people to change yours. Typical. Just like Al Gore with his private jets and his half-billion he's made on carbon credits, etc.
- If you cannot predict, it isn't science. The non-droughts in the US Southwest. Name one Warmist prediction which has proven accurate over the past 10 years. (Indeed, the Coolists in the Global Cooling frenzy back in the 70's have been better predictors.)
- From Dr. Sanity's Environmental Fantasies:
If the radical environmentalists really wanted to "do something" about global warming, then they would be calling for funding projects that explore countermeasures and methods to adapt to it. What we see instead is the same kind of religious fanaticism and holy fervor that the left so despises in the fundamental right. What they really want is power over people.
Theirs is basically a totalitarian agenda in which they, the "elites", will dictate how people should live on this earth.
- Pajamas: Noble Corruption. I see nothing noble about refusing to be skeptical about scientific theories and computer models. Just ask any hedgie how Nobel-laureate computer models work out as long-term predictors of complex systems.
- Also, How Climate-Change Dance Theory spells the end of a movement. Good grief. All Bozos on that wacky bus.
We know that a Scottie won the Westminster Show, and everybody loves Scotties. I was partial to the Coonhound. My cuz emailed me that he had a show favorite: The Kuvasz. Never heard of them. Big dogs, bred in Hungary to protect livestock. Look kinda like a wolf in sheep's clothing:
December 7, 1941. The Pacific Clipper, Queen of Pan American Airways fleet of flying boats is 6 days out of San Francisco, bound for Auckland, New Zealand. Captain Robert Ford receives a coded message: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor...Implement War Plan A...Proceed to Auckland, NZ...Maintain radio silence...Wait for instructions...Your aircraft is a strategic resource-it must not fall into enemy hands under any circumstances
Pan American Airways bases all across the Pacific were captured. Returning to the US west coast by the Pacific Clipper did not seem possible. A week of waiting, then another coded message:
DEC 14, 1941: Do not return to Hawaii. Do not return to US west coast...Strip aircraft of all markings and identification...proceed west...maintain radio silence...deliver aircraft to Marine Terminal, LaGuardia, NY. Good luck.
Wednesday, February 17. 2010
Hope and change...Economists Predict Cutbacks, Tax Increases That 'Aren't Even Imaginable'.
VDH has it right: What a Difference a Year Makes. A quote:
...what changed? The Obama administration offered a statist agenda of massive deficits, and it blamed Bush for America's current problems. The people revolted, and even the combined power of large Democratic congressional majorities, a ministry-of-truth media, and an Ivy League technocracy could not push through hope and change — largely due to Democratic legislators' worries that they were walking out on a plank that would soon be sawed off by the next election.
The implosion of the Obama administration is newsworthy, but not as astonishing as this petulant liberal reappraisal of both popular political participation and the structure of American government...
Remember this from Nov., 2008? Republicans still in denial as wilderness years stretch ahead
Over the transom:
My raft has a 15,000 lb capacity. The deck is 18ft x 18ft with 12 plastic foam filled dock floats that are 4ft x 4ft by 18 inches high and the gazebo is 10 ft. Hexagon with a table and chairs.
Inside, under the table is my trolling motor so I can take it out to my favorite fishing hole. The trolling motor is remote controlled wireless so I can be fishing outside and operate the motor.
On the top of the table I have a LOWRANCE Fish-Finder with depth sounding sonar's and temp gauge. I have 2 electric winches with 40 lb. anchors. I have also built in a water pump so I can clean the fish right on the spot.
Now I can relax and fish while my wife can sit and relax.
 Just the usual old winter friends lately: SC Junco, WT Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Blue Jay, RB Woodpecker, Carolina Wren, Cardinal, Chickadee, some dang House Sparrows, Tufted Titmouse, Mourning Dove.
I need my Sharpie back to eat those overfed House Sparrows.
(It's interesting to see how just some of the Juncoes - ground-feeders - figure out how to use a hanging feeder, but most do not. Have yet to see a WT Sparrow on the hanger. I throw handfuls of seed on the ground each morning for the ground-feeders, figuring it will all be gone by late afternoon so as not to encourage rats.)
Also, a flock of Robins stopped by yesterday to finish off the Holly berries. Not a single berry left, now. I had a few early blackbirds last week - Grackles - but they are probably back in Georgia by now. I do usually see some Blackbird species around by Feb 15, trying to push the envelope.
The lack of Pelicans at my feeders would appear to disprove global warming catastrophe models. I'd write it up for a peer-reviewed journal, if the gummint or the EU would give me a generous grant: Effects of Global Warming on Pelican Occurrance at New England Bird-Feeders. $1.3 million would cover my research just fine, or at least help me get it underway. I will guarantee a research product which will help "the cause," and the $ will help me hire a handy research assistant/pelican-counter like one of Theo's so we don't lose all of our critical data:
Tuesday, February 16. 2010
You probably already knew that the so-called Sphinx had been deeply eroded by rain from when the Sahara was wet, that the Sphinx has been buried under sand through most of its lifetime, and that the face is likely not the original. What I did not know is that the body of the sculpture was not constructed, but rather carved out of a single piece of limestone in the middle of a quarry.
Good update at Smithsonian.
Monday, February 15. 2010
Image is Currier and Ives' 1851 portrait of "America," the first boat to win the famous race.
The America's Cup (named for the sailboat, not the country) is now sailed with multi-hulls with 17-story masts. 33 knots out of a 10 knot wind speed. Here's winner US-17:
h/t, SDA, with links to more details of the race
Sunday, February 14. 2010
The University of California campus at Irvine was the scene a few days ago of pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupting the presentation by Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren. Scott Johnson at PowerLine sums up the demonstrators’ core proposition: “The actions are based on the proposition that the defense of Israel in speech is beyond the bounds of civilized discourse just as the defense of Israel in deed is illegitimate because Israel is illegitimate.”
Martin Solomon posted a video of the action. More details at Solomon’s post. Oren conducted himself with dignity in not backing down from free speech. This key question: “Where are the grownups in the UC Irvine administration?”
The usual suspects defend the protestors as somehow engaged in rightful “civil disobedience.”
Max Boot, a graduate of "Berzerkley", wrote at Contentions, of this and similar campus attacks, “Anything short of expulsion, or at least suspension, would seem to be a wrist-slap that will only encourage more such misconduct in the future and make a mockery of the free speech that universities are supposed to champion.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial read: “It was an embarrassing display of inhospitality [at Irvine]. It was also a wasted opportunity. The critics should have stayed and listened. As a U.S.-born scholar on the Middle East and a best-selling author with a Ph.D. from Princeton, Oren has much to say about one of the most important and interesting corners of the globe.”
By contrast, Ambassador Oren appeared at the University of California campus at San Diego a few days later.
Thanks to the firm position taken by UCSD’s administration led by Chancellor Marye Ann Fox, this lecture was not a repeat of the unfortunate incident in UC Irvine on February 8th where the Israeli Ambassador’s speech was disrupted by a well-organized group of student protesters.
In sharp contrast, UCSD’s administration demonstrated resolve and determination to conduct a program in a peaceful and civilized manner and in the best traditions of the university’s commitment to freedom of speech and exchange of ideas. The presentation started with a strong statement from Peter Cowhey, Dean of the UC San Diego School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, that interruptions would not be tolerated during Ambassador Oren’s presentation and that members of the audience would have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. The lecture proceeded smoothly…
Though the Q&A was dominated by pro-Palestinian students, “Ambassador Oren responded to each question with the knowledge of the accomplished historian that he is and with the wisdom of a true diplomat.”
The audience and the subject were treated with respect and benefited from civil discourse. University administrators or others who are willing to forfeit that freedom of speech and minimal manners themselves do not belong on campus.
No more eccentric than the rest of her Amherst family. Indeed, her life has been sentimentalized.
Well, always interesting to have an epileptic nympho around the place, especially on St. Valentine's Day when the Christian saint seems to give way to the celebration of Eros.
The Valentine sweetheart of Maggie's Farm is our dearly loved commenter Marianne Matthews.
Marianne is a classically trained musician, among many other wonderful things, with a sane, quick, and fun-loving mind. I share Marianne's love of folk music, she broadening my appreciations beyond the labor and protest songs I was raised with to older and other countries' folk classics. Marianne has been deeply involved with many of the greats. Marianne sent me a disc of some of her recaptured recordings from the 1950's, which you have to hear to soar. We're working on a way to put at least one up at Maggie's Farm. Meanwhile, you'll have to be content with this 1972 photo of Marianne and all-together now wishing Marianne a Happy Valentine.
FRIENDSHIP
Oh, the comfort -- the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person,
Having neither to weigh thoughts,
Nor measure words -- but pouring them
All right out -- just as they are --
Chaff and grain together --
Certain that a faithful hand will
Take and sift them --
Keep what is worth keeping --
And with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.
-Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Friday, February 12. 2010
Photo: Tenerife, Canary Islands
Mrs. BD and I have been engaged in a month-long debate about trips this year (in addition to the usual Cape Cod family reunion and, I think, hunting in Manitoba).
Cruise or car or trains? Scotland? Provence? Vienna and Prague? Venice and Veneto and the south Tyrol? Canary Islands and Madeira with stops in Morocco and Portugal? Turkey (I love that country)? Sailboat down the Turkish coast? Israel and Egypt?
Carpe diem, right? Now, or never. Could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
I am more in a Provence mood (or maybe Sicily again), but I always do love to get on a ship or a boat. It gives me a reason (besides tuitions) to work. (My theory of life? We can relax when we are dead.) Put it on the credit card...
Where do our readers want to go?
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